Who is on the shortlist for the inaugural Climate Fiction Prize? Newbury nature writer Nicola Chester reveals the 5 top contenders

The shortlist for the inaugural Climate Fiction Prize has been announced - and one of the judges is Inkpen nature writer and former Newbury Weekly News columnist Nicola Chester, who works as a school librarian in Hungerford.

She is the RSPB‘s first and longest-running female columnist as well as writing a column for Countryfile Magazine and is a Guardian Country Diarist.. Nicola is a past winner of the Richard Jeffferies Award and a Wainwright Prize shortlister for her memoir On Gallows Down: Place, Protest and Belonging (2021) 'From treetop protests at the Newbury Bypass to the grand Highclere Estate, On Gallows Down is that rare thing: nature writing as political as it is personal' Robert Macfarlane..

Nicola tells @newbury today about the experience in choosing an exciting, expansive shortlist for the inaugural Climate Fiction Prize and the importance of literary prizes such as this.

“I had the joy of meeting with my fellow judges (Andy Fryers, Hay Festival’s sustainability director, Madeleine Bunting, writer, author and chair, and Tori Tsui, climate justice activist and writer who dialled in) at the atmospheric setting of Hawkwood College in Stroud, to debate and choose an exciting, expansive shortlist for the inaugural Climate Fiction Prize. As with the longlist, it was tough - and we all had to say goodbye to some of our favourites, but we're really thrilled with the books we finally settled on.

“The Prize - and these books - really show how the climate fiction space is expanding across genres, breaking the bounds of its original ‘cli-fi’ home in science fiction, to become a cross-genre theme and influence, that is more inclusive, engaging, diverse and truly exciting. The shortlist encompasses interstellar nature writing, magical realism, real life drama, dystopia and a wild kind of historical, time-travelling science fiction that is genre-busting in itself. Each novel conveys and evinces the power and joy of storytelling, to show ourselves anew in the light of the climate crisis, illuminating how we might respond to, and rise to its challenges with hope, courage and inventiveness.

“The importance of literary prizes such as this to support or lead a cultural shift, cannot be underestimated.

“The Climate Fiction Prize is doing what the Wainwright Prize did - and does - for nature writing, expanding as it has into writing about conservation and children's fiction concerning the natural world.

“The Climate Fiction Prize platforms and celebrates a new coming of age of writing and reading, and asks how we might imaginatively respond to an unfair present and an uncertain future, whilst recognising a new-found will to build a way through. Empowering and hopeful, this is creative invention asking fundamental, elevating questions of what it is to be alive in these times.

“I've loved reading and judging the books and am looking forward to the winner of the £10,000 prize, supported by Climate Spring, being announced at a ceremony in London on 14 May 2025, then celebrated and interviewed at Hay Festival on May 30 this year.”

What Nicola says about the shortlisted books:

Orbital by Samantha Harvey. A majestic hymnal of what we have, what we share and what we stand to lose. Our only home observed on repeat from the end of a lyrical umbilical cord, from the planet which birthed and sustains us, it reads like a preparatory eulogy sung by a small choir of deeply human angels. Stellar and profound.

In Roz Dinneen’s Briefly Very Beautiful, a mother driven by climate and societal breakdown is forced again and again to act on the question; how do you know when it’s time to leave, and who to trust? In an unsettlingly recognisable dystopian near-future, this is a haunting, poetic and urgent observation of love, beauty and the desire to live through a world on fire.

The Morningside by Téa Obreht mingles magical realism in a part-flooded world that hasn’t yet learnt from its mistakes. It represents an underclass of constant displacement, beguiled by folklore, myth and stories that reflect the uncanny, eerie changes in weather, and give the characters – and ourselves – hope of recovery and somewhere to belong. Here is a place where ‘familiarities you had come to take for granted were transformed by the act of storytelling,’ as well as climate disruption.

Abi Daré’s And So I Roar, takes us from urban to rural Nigeria and the heart of climate justice, where women and girls bear the brunt of colonialisation, the coercive traditions of patriarchy and the blame for climate breakdown. This fierce, emotional page turner has a fantastically realised sisterhood of spirited protagonists, who act to change the narrative pressed upon them. With courage, resilience and hope, they confront a climate justice of place, community and situation that we root for.

The Ministry of Time, Kaliane Bradley’s nimble, giddy and playful conversation with the past, with its clever twist on a refugee hangover in real time, is somewhere the climate crisis lurks subtly: until it acts like a gunshot near the denouement of this inventive and entertaining romp, to ricochet right back through the narrative you’ve just read.